Film Treatment

Posted by : Aiman and Sabaina

The title of the documentary is ‘INDOORS ALTER OUTDOORS’. The title itself signifies the story of the documentary on which our research and ideology is based on. The documentary backs up the claim that indoor activities has taken over those of outdoors. Children and teenagers nowadays are witnessed more attached with video games such as PS3, Xbox, Wii and Kinect etc., which has resulted in less interest towards the outdoor activities such as  Hopscotch, cycling, Doug the ball etc. This recent trend has been provoked with the help of the new improved technologies introduced in the market in the recent years and their further development into new features, capturing the interest of the youth.

It is going to give evidence of the stance mentioned earlier. The target audience is going to be the youth itself considering it is based on them and one of the most widespread hobbies of theirs; on the other hand, the documentary is also targeted at parents as they will be witnessing one of the most ongoing activities highlighted in this documentary regarding their children which will help us acquire their attention.

The documentary consists of 3 acts that are going to blend in with each other and create the entire story.

ACT 1: This is going to introductory. The theme of the documentary is going to be established in this particular part. The camera will to take short clips of a number of areas showing candid shots of children carrying out their activities. These clips are to be combined with the help of fast editing showing children at different times and at different areas. This step makes the audience clear about the age group that the documentary focuses on. The narration, on the other hand, will back up all the clips that are going to be incorporated in the documentary. It will give a general introduction of the activities of the children and then come to the topic that has been extracted from their lives. It will include facts about the activities of children and lay more emphasis on the shift in trend. These facts will be backed up with the help of short duration interviews of random people from the part where they agree that this habit has become wide among the youth of today. The interviews are going to be captured with mid shots as they will be speaking to the audience. While the interviewees speak out their perceptions, their voices are going to be played at the back of clips showing children playing with gadgets giving proof of the stance. This particular act highlights the establishing part of the documentary.

ACT 2: The editing going to be at a normal velocity in this case. The narrator is going take the audience towards an 11 year old (Dawood) and  who will act as an example of the theme of the documentary. He will be filmed with the help of candid shots while carrying out his day to day routine during which the camera will be following them playing with different gadgets as to prove the point of the invasion of indoor activities on them. He will be interviewed as well in which he will be questioned about his attraction towards the video games etc. Different camera angles of the camera are going to be used in this particular act. The use of angles will be used while filming Dawood at the time when he will be playing some console of his, this will show the concentration level and the attraction of theirs from different angles such as high angle to show the console and the low angle to show their expressions, close ups of his face and hands that all comes under the 5-shots rule while playing etc. The camera follows him throughout the day with the help of panning and tracking in or out. His parents will be included in the video and with the help of L cut and 180 degree camera angles as with this the feel and emotions of both the parties will be sent out to the audience. Interviews will be taken from his parents also, asking them about the problems they have regarding this particular habit that has become common; the parents will also be questioned about the activities they were dwelled in at their times and the changes they see from their time onwards to till date. This will make the documentary more informative and the parents whom we were aiming our documentary at will feel closer to the topic considering their childhood has also been incorporated in our documentary.

ACT 3: This part brings the documentary to its ending. After the clips of Dawood the narrator supports the theme of the documentary and brings back the audience from the his footage. With this, the narrator raises the question ‘Do people agree?’ and a number of interviewees will answer the question by saying ‘YES, No or Maybe’ with the help of fast editing and a still shot will be placed immediately after the interviews of a playground which will slowly fade out.

The lights in the documentary will mostly be natural light. This is because we will be interviewing random people outdoors and so natural light will be the only light at times of outdoor interviews. However, the lights that will be used for interviews recorded indoors will be made up i.e. using a background light and also a key light in order to give a very homely feel at the faces of the interviewees, diffusers will be brought if required in order to tone down the key lights. There will not be a complete usage of high key or low key lights but a moderate approach will be taken in practice.

The editing is going to be simple; we are not going to use any special editing technique just the simple editing tools and transactions such as fade in and  fade out etc. in order prevent our documentary from giving a very ‘artificial’ feel to the audience. The background music is going to be soft and playful, in accordance to the theme of our documentary.  The sounds are going to be synchronized in the interviews. Moreover, a lot of Depth of field shots and point of view shots will help show the perceptions of the people in our documentary.  

The colors and props are going to be according to the theme of the documentary. The colors that we are going to use in our media text will be those which give lively effect not serious or dark effect. Characters would be wearing their normal clothes as to show that we have taken candid shots without any interference from our side.

Furthermore, the duration will be kept up to 5 to 6 minutes. This is will be easy for people to watch considering it’s hard to for them to take a lot of time out of their busy routines. Moreover, stretching out the documentary further on brings with it the risk of being monotonous at some point that could become a cause of the audience losing interest during the video.

Over all the feel of our documentary is going to be very light .The overall feel of the documentary is going to be very light, which the young children's around 12 to older people in 60's can enjoy it, keeping in consideration the stance of our product. Considering that we are aiming at children, teenagers and parents it would be wise to adapt a calming and soothing approach throughout the entire video.